Steven A. Soper Lecture at the 2017 Aspen Cancer Conference
Steven A. Soper, Director of the Center of Biomodular Multiscale Systems for Precision Medicine (CBM2), presented a lecture titled, “New Tools for Liquid Biopsies to Enable Precision Medicine,” on July 16, 2017, at the Aspen Cancer Conference. Dr. Soper described the development of a suite of novel microfluidic devices that process blood sample to yield circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating free DNA (cfDNA) and exosomes. Each microfluidic device can isolate the target with recovery >90% and sufficient purity (>80%) to enable downstream molecular analysis. He explained further how these isolated blood components can be interrogated to evaluate disease-associated liquid biopsy markers, including next generation sequencing, single nucleotide polymorphisms, fluorescence in situ hybridization and RNA species. He also discussed the use of these assays for several epithelial-based cancers. David G. Kaufman, the co-director of CBM2, also attended the Aspen Cancer Conference. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Aspen Cancer Conference. Roy Jensen, director of the KU Cancer Center, also attended the Meeting. He serves on the Board of Director of the Meeting.
